Igor Mitoraj
“TO ANCIENT MODELS I PREFER LIVING MODELS, THE CHARACTERS I MEET ALONG THE STREETS, FROM WHICH I CAN STEAL SOMETHING, POSSIBLY THE SOUL.”
THE BIOGRAPHY
Igor Mitoraj was born on 26 March 1944 in Oederan, a small town in Saxony, and spent his youth near Krakow. While attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, he drew close to the master Tadeusz Kantor, a versatile figure in the Polish cultural environment: painter, theatre director and set designer. He was the driving force behind his decision to leave communist Poland and seek fortune elsewhere.
In 1968, he relocated to Paris where he attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. This is the city that consecrated him at the time of his first personal exhibition in 1976 at the Galerie La Hune of Paris. The success of this event induced Mitoraj to devote himself mainly to sculpture. In the same year, he won the 21st edition of the “Prix de la sculpture de Montrouge”, which earned him the award, by the French Minister of Culture, of an atelier in Montmartre, in the Bateau Lavoir.
It is in this period that Mitoraj made several trips around the world, in the name of experiences that were to prove decisive for his artistic style: visiting Italy and Greece was the way for him to come into contact with Greco-Roman and renaissance classicism.
THE LOVE FOR VERSILIA
The success he experienced in Italy came with the grandiose exhibition in Castel Sant’Angelo in 1985, which earned him the invitation to take part in the XLII Venice Biennale. From this moment onwards, there was no shortage of invitations to exhibit in the most important international museums, as well as prestigious commissions for the creation of monumental sculptures in the largest metropolises, such as Milan, Rome, London, Paris, Atlanta and Tokyo.
It is in the first half of the 1980s that Mitoraj came to know the rich territory of Versilia, ideal for the artistic processing of marble and important for his foundries. Pietrasanta, a symbolic place for the excellence of its raw materials and, therefore, for the rich presence of highly specialized artisan workers in the area, became at once the ideal working context: here the artist opened a large atelier, establishing his main residence in the city.
ART
Despite the influence of such great figures as Henry Moor and Cèsar, in addition to Italian culture steeped in history, humanism and classicism, Mitoraj has always strongly asserted that his works did not draw inspiration from specific models, whether classical or contemporary. His works exalt the beauty of classical bodies, with all that they suffer the ravages of time, as if allegories of a deep conflict on the border between tamed horrors and unfolded Beauty.
